Day 53, 54  Rest days Almaty, Kazakhstan

After today I'm not sure when I'll be able to post next, we are in the "wilds" for two days, then cross the border into country #5, Kyrgyzstan.    I'm not sure what electronic connections will be like.

Almaty is a wonderful city, very clean and very green - every street is heavily tree lined.

This is in the city centre:

A carriage ride in one of the many parks:

Our Hotel:

The collection of restaurants is wonderful, very high end at (for us) low to mid pricing and almost all have very nice outdoor seating - that comes with the very warm summertime climate.  Also many are using the latest generation of electronic ordering systems, at one place the drinks arrived whilst the waiter was still at the table.

Many of the establishments are Muslim, which means no alcohol, our restaurant tonight was such a place.  To drink we ordered Kvass which is made from fermenting black or regular rye bread.  There is a bit of alcohol, 0.5 to 1.0% and commonly is fruit flavoured. What we had seemed to be flavoured with raisins.  The two young guys front left became friends with Par (back right), they had excellent English and were enthusiastic tour guides.

I’ve noticed a very odd thing for a large city - there are no parking meters or variations, also effectively no “no parking” signs.  I believe almost all the buildings have parking underneath, so there is no pressure on the street parking - parking spaces are everywhere.   Although everyone drives fast by our standards,everyone seems very civil.

For some time now we have been seeing a variation of the Uber taxi system - one simply stands at the side of the road with your hand out (think hitchhiking), cars stop almost immediately, you negotiate a rate and off you go.  This is very common both in the cities and in the country.  We did this several times - average wait time for a car was about 10 seconds, typical ride cost was about $1.25 for 3 of us.  There is no licensing or "control" on the system, it simply happens.

Just to position Almaty, it is 1,500km directly north of New Delhi, India.

The pic below is of the Zenkow Cathedral one of Almaty’s few remaining Tsarist era buildings due to the devastating 1911 earthquake.  Although it doesn’t look like it, it is made entirely of wood (biggest wooden Catherdral in the world), including wooden nails.  I wandered past early this evening, there was a choir singing, beautiful, I love how wonderful a choir in a church sounds.

A very powerful war memorial: